more Leicester

[woolymonkey]

Have heard from the vet and it's not the worst, but it's not good.

 X-rays show the break in the pelvis is just where it needs to bear the load from the hip joint, and it's pushed really far in on one side which may make him unable to poo.  They want to wait for the other vet's opinion this time tomorrow.  Possible options are
- 6 weeks cage rest
- surgery and cage rest
- amputation of left back leg to remove strain on pelvis there
- giving up

At the moment it's definitely too soon to be giving up on him, so we go on waiting: waiting for the other vet's opinion and waiting to see how he gets on over next few days, especially whether he pees and poos. Looks like he'll be at the vet's over the weekend and we'll won't know until next week whether he's coming home.  As long as the vet thinks he can recover, we'll do what it takes, but if it gets to the point where he's suffering to no good purpose...

On the plus side, he's clearly very comfortable in his cage and on cat drugs, and I'm very impressed with Hollyoak vet.  They do their own 24-hour and weekend service, so he won't have to be moved around.

I've taken him his blankie and some of the fudz he likes.  Have I missed anything else I could do to help him be comfortable?

Comments are much appreciated but I probably won't be replying.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, poor Leicester! Very, very good wishes to him and to you (I only just saw this, having got back yesterday and not managed to get to lj till just now).
Ish, meanwhile, is at vet with suspected intestinal nasties...

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Poor Leicester! I'm sorry to hear about this!

Years ago, I was in a similar situation: foster mommy to a stray cat because he had just been knocked down by a car and my parents and I were the only ones who would take responsibility for him. Rupert, as I named the cat, had a broken pelvis too, and it was very similar to Leicester's injury: we would know if he was going to live by seeing whether he could pass a bowel movement. (He eventually did, about a week and a half later. It was the most beautiful crap I had ever seen in my life.)

While he was unable to stand, we did what you're doing--kept him in a crate with food, water, and a cat box. He couldn't really use the box so he was just peeing where he lay, at first, and we bought incontinence sheets intended for human use and used them as his bedding. They were basically big sheets of diaper material that would help stop him getting nappy-rash by absorbing pee away from him. You may want to do something of the sort, for his comfort and your convenience in cleaning up. And of course we washed him a lot (with sponges, not our tongues); he hated that. Even so, he developed what were essentially urine burns on his haunches, where fur fell out. That was probably more painful than the bone break for Rupert. That all got better in the end, but don't be too alarmed if he goes through a really messy phase while on bed rest.

He wouldn't eat at first, probably because he felt like hell, and I tempted him by dabbing egg yolk on his nose. At first he wouldn't even lick it off but one day his tongue shot out and licked and I applied the rest of the yolk bit by bit. After that it was fine, but you may have a worrisome time pressing food on him at first.

Anyway, Rupert, by slow degrees, and over the next five or six weeks, got up, started eating and drinking unprompted, used the leg, used the cat box by himself, and got on with enjoying life. Here are all my best wishes that it should be the same for Leicester.

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this anecdote. it's really encouraging-- a week and a half? OMG!

I had a marvelous cat who needed a rear leg amputation. He got along quite well afterwards-- we renamed him "Trike"

Here's a link to the homemade sick kitty food that I have used successfully on many occaisions;
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Cats-1606/2012/1/sick-cat-37.htm

You can, if you have to, eyedropper it into their mouths.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

It's nearly twenty years ago, so I may be exaggerating, but I know that it took him a disturbingly long time to get his intestines up and running again. We'd been sent home with Rupert to wait for signs of either recovery or death, and every time he seemed in pain, we didn't know whether to think "Broken pelvises hurt" or "Peritonitis is setting in, the end is near." Fortunately the latter wasn't the case. But he wasn't eating--and may have been starved for a while before the accident--and what with no food going in, and what with its being painful to stand to defecate, he just lay there for about a week except when we moved him for a bath.

"Trike"--cute. I've seen three-legged cats, they move like bunnies.

The eyedropper is a good move; if a cat is really feeling awful, he won't even lick food off his own nose.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

Poor Leicester! Hang in there, and my very best wishes for his recovery.

[lj_stowaway]

Oh, poor Leicester! Sending many good thoughts to him, and to you all. {{{hugs}}}

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

We had a cat when I was a teenager that dragged home one night after being gone a while, with a broken pelvis. We took her to the vet and had it set and kept her in the cage until she'd recovered - and then she was fine the rest of her life. Her tail did fall off at one point, well after she'd recovered, but she didn't seem to be pained by it. So in your case it might just be a matter of what you're willing to spend, which is probably a hell of a lot more than it was 25 years ago. Good luck! :-/

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry to hear this . Poor Leicester and poor you.

[amenirdis.livejournal.com]

Poor baby! And poor all of you! Here's hoping the kitten boy hangs in there.

[anef.livejournal.com]

At least you know the worst, and there's still quite a lot of room for hope. Fingers crossed for the next few days.